“I can’t dear, you know I can’t,” replied Bessie, mollified instantly. “You know I promised Mr. Crichton that I would live at Hazel Bank most of the year and keep everything as he liked it, and it’s only right, (when you remember how very handsomely he provided for me), that his sisters should have the pleasure of coming there often.”
“Yes, I know. You’re quite right,” said Edmond. Then he fell into a brown study for some minutes. He was lying on the sofa with his hands clasped above his head. “How like he is just now to what he was when he was a boy!” thought Bessie as she glanced at him. Suddenly he spoke.
“I shall be driven to marry, I believe,” he said. “It’s so uncomfortable when you go away, Bessie. I like the feeling of a woman about the house, I think. I believe you come and go on purpose to make me miss you. I can’t think why you want me to marry. Most sisters would set themselves against it.”
“It’s very silly of them then,” said Bessie sagely. “If you marry somebody nice, and I don’t think you would marry anybody not nice, I should be far more comfortable about you.”
“Well, we’ll see,” said Mr. Guildford. And then he took up a book, and Mrs. Crichton’s attention was again absorbed in her knitting.
A few days later Mr. Guildford paid his second visit to Greystone Abbey. He had intended going there early in the day, but found it impossible to do so. It was not till between five and six in the afternoon that he found himself getting out of the train at Greybridge station.
Colonel Methvyn’s carriage was to meet him by this train—had he come by an earlier one, he intended to have walked to the Abbey—but it had not yet made its appearance. Mr. Guildford set off along the road to meet it.
It was spring now, late spring, all but May. After the severe winter, spring had come with even more than its usual sweetness and radiance. April seemed eager to welcome May; there was a glow and promise everywhere; a sound of cheery bustle and preparation among the leaves, a whisper of rejoicing in the “sweet breathing of the fields,” in the “kisses of the daisies.” For once in a way Mr. Guildford yielded to the soft sensuous enjoyment of the moment; he strolled along the pretty country road where the dear primroses were nestling in the hedges, and the coyer violets too, all but hidden in their leaves; he listened, dreamily to the pretty country sounds, the ever-distant plaintive “cuck-coo,” the near at-hand homely clucking of a matronly hen and her brood, the barking of dogs, the creaking of a mill-wheel, the voices of little children at play, all mingled into a pleasant whole of living, peaceful happiness. For once in a way, the young man yielded to the impression that sometimes in the pauses of a busy life, we are tempted to accept as the interpretation of the dream, that after all the world is a happy place, that life is a good and pleasant thing, that to enjoy and not to suffer is the rule! And a new sort of hopefulness and expectation seemed to thrill through his whole being. Ever afterwards that evening stroll—that bit of commonplace country road—seemed to him to have been an actual realisation of the spirit of the spring; to have contained a breath of the very essence of youth and hope and promise. He did not ask himself why these feelings seemed so suddenly strong within him; he fancied it only the influence of the fresh, pure air, and pleasant sights and sounds. He would not have owned to himself, he did not even suspect the curious eagerness, the more than interest with which he had for some days looked forward to his visit to Greystone Abbey. He did not know till the light of the future shone back upon the past how already a sweet, grave woman’s face had begun to change the world to him, to infuse fresh meaning into the flowers and the sunshine, to set to new music the songs of the birds.
Before he had reached the bend where the road, hitherto little more than lane, grew into wider, unshaded highway, Colonel Methvyn’s carriage met him. It was a phaeton this time, and the driver was not Mr. Guildford’s old acquaintance.
The drive in the pleasant evening air along the smooth, well-kept high-road, was very different from his last approach to Greystone, and when they reached the Abbey, by a different entrance from the gate on the Haverstock Road, Mr. Guildford hardly recognised the place as the same. It was picturesque certainly, as he had expected, but more homely, less imposing, and venerable than his imagination, from the little he had seen of it, had unconsciously pictured it. The hall, which was as lofty as the two stories of the rest of the house, and the wide porch with its quaint stone seats, were the only remains of the original building; the rest had been added at various later dates, some half-ruined walls and outbuildings having been restored and taken into the plan of the house. The walls, both new and old however, were well grown over with ivy, so that no incongruity was visible at first sight, and the effect of the whole was harmonious and pleasing.